Comments from a conservative-bordering-on-libertarian living in the great State of Maryland

Friday, May 09, 2008

McCain's 2000 Ballot

Unlike me, our very own Crablaw apparently holds blogress Arianna Huffington in high esteem (although it seems much of that esteem is hormonally related). Unfortunately, he was unable to timely attend a recent DC book-signing event by the same Ms. Huffington. Too bad, because she is back in the news on a topic that was addressed at that event.

A story with some recent play concerns John McCain’s presidential vote in 2000. According to Arianna Huffington, Senator McCain (and his wife Cindy) explicitly told her shortly after the 2000 election that, in fact, they had not voted for President Bush.

“At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. "I didn't vote for George Bush" the man confessed. "I didn't either," his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband).”

That story didn’t come out until Monday on Ms. Huffington’s blog and was immediately and emphatically denied by the McCain campaign.

“Now two other guests at the same dinner, given by the actress Candice Bergen, at her home in Beverly Hills, say they heard much the same thing as Ms. Huffington. Both of them, the former “West Wing” actors Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff, were asked by Ms. Huffington to speak to The New York Times.”

But when you read their accounts, you get the sense that apparently John McCain did little else at that party but go around confiding in people that he didn’t vote for George Bush:

And yet, remarkably, this story has stayed undercover for almost seven-and-a-half years. With no other reports of other times John McCain confiding his 2000 presidential vote that I’m aware of, we are left to conclude that the Senator picked this one occasion to confide this matter with several people with whom he had no obvious close relationship and with no obvious Republican ties.